


you're in my veins, you fuck.

by rosaecae



Series: Augmented Reality [4]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 7x10, Canon Compliant, Gap Filler, M/M, Speculation, but not really, the van scene, yes the fucking van scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:58:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10003076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosaecae/pseuds/rosaecae
Summary: “I think,” Ian finally repeats, “that in some parallel universe we worked out the way we were supposed to.”“How’s that?”“We got the bad universe, I think. That’s what’s happening, here. We got the bad ending.”





	

The van floor is cold and hard even with a blanket acting as a mattress, but Mickey doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel anything but Ian’s arms around him. If he died like this, now, right here, he thinks he’d be happy. That seems like a good way to go. God knows it would make his life simpler.

“Hey,” Ian whispers against his neck, and Mickey nearly startles. He had assumed Ian asleep over an hour ago.

“Yeah?”

Ian’s voice still doesn’t seem real, even now. The way it puffed in the wet air as he yelled in frustration on the docks still seems like an illusion when Mickey plays it back in his mind. Maybe that’s why he stayed so calm, so steady. Why he took whatever Ian gave him, even if that look in his eye screamed finality, regret. Need. Closure.

“D’you think, back when we first got together, that first time, if we went back and told ourselves that what we had right there was the simplest it was ever gonna be, do you think we’d believe it?”

Mickey stops breathing for a second. For the first time that night, Ian sounds like Ian. His Ian. Real, tangible Ian. Second father to his son, love of his life, etched into his bones Ian. He sounds real again. _Real._ Solid. Warm.

_We._

He’d missed that word. No more _you_ ’s or _I_ ’s. Those words could fuck off and fall out of existence for all he cares. _We._

“The fuck are you talkin’ about, man?” Mickey mumbles.

He’d forgotten how much he’d missed this. He’d forgotten about the little stuff. It was hard not to forget about the little stuff.

He knows how it will go, now that he recognizes the formula. Ian tries to have some profound bullshit conversation, Mickey blows it off, Ian will elaborate and say something that leaves Mickey thinking for days afterwards.

 _God,_ Mickey loves him. All of him.

“Before you fell in love with me. Before all of this. When you just wanted to fuck.”

Mickey blinks into the darkness. Decides he wants to see Ian’s face, now that he’s real again. He turns in Ian’s arms, and he’s greeted by the open eyes of the scrawny kid he neglected to beat the shit out of six years ago.

_Oh. Right. It’s you._

They feel like a lifetime. Them, together. A whole lifetime and then some.

“Before I fell in love with you, huh?”

Ian gazes at him unblinkingly. “Yeah.”

“Pretty presumptuous.”

Ian’s eyebrows draw together. His eyes are gray in the grainy dark. Mickey already knew that.

“So you don’t--” Ian bites off his words, and the fear in his eyes is heart wrenching.

Mickey hates that he still cares. Hates the words that bubble to the surface. He shouldn’t be the one confessing over and over. He shouldn’t. Not now, not anymore.

He is. Maybe he doesn’t mind it. Make up for lost time. Lost time before, lost time during. Lost time after. After this. When Ian leaves him again.

Mickey’s eyes don’t fall from Ian’s anymore. They can’t. They’ve swallowed him whole. He has nothing left that isn’t Ian’s already, anyway.

“I loved you,” Mickey says weakly, his voice falling short. Ian finally blinks. “From the first second,” he finishes, after a long pause. “The first fuckin’ second.”

Ian’s eyes are shining. Maybe there’s tears. Mickey just feels hollow. Still warm. The way he always felt when they were like this, before.

“I’m sorry,” Ian whispers in a wavering voice.

He doesn’t explain what he’s sorry about. Mickey thinks it’s enough, knows what it means.

Sorry for pushing. For refusing help. For leaving, for all the leaving. For not visiting. For trying to move on, for trying _so hard_ to move on. To pretend like Mickey never existed. For taking, taking, taking.

Mickey didn’t mind the taking, as long as he had Ian. Mickey was used to the taking. Ian was just the first person to deserve it, in his eyes.

“You know parallel universes?” Ian asks.

“Maybe.”

“You believe in them?”

Mickey smiles. “Maybe.”

“I think,” Ian pauses, and he gets this look, this expression that Mickey hasn’t seen in years, before prison, before the diagnosis, before the army and the wedding and his dad, before _everything_ , when Mickey loved him so much that it hurt when it pulsed through him without release, but he was too scared, too fucking scared of the world to do anything about it. When Ian didn’t have everything, not yet. Not everything.

He’s not too scared to keep looking, now. Not too scared to memorize this expression. Terrified fondness. An easiness in the face of danger. Like Ian knows if he’s caught with it, someone will skin him alive, but he looks on, anyway. Except, Mickey’s looking. He sees. He reciprocates.

It hurts, again. Loving Ian hurts again.

Maybe it always hurt. A little bit.

“I think,” Ian finally repeats, “that in some parallel universe we worked out the way we were supposed to.”

“How’s that?”

Ian smiles softly, and Mickey almost ends the conversation with a kiss right there. But he’s curious. Too curious.

“Got our happy ending. No prison, no bipolar. No...bullshit. No bullshit. Happy, for fuckin’ once. The way we deserve.”

“Happy,” Mickey echoes. Mickey thought they were, at one point, but he thinks he knows what Ian means. Happy. The way people like them can never be. The real kind of happy. The carefree kind of happy.

“We got the bad universe, I think. That’s what’s happening, here. We got the bad ending.”

The way Ian says ending, like it means something, like the fucking word _means_ something makes the hollow feeling in Mickey’s chest swell to his head.

A million things run through Mickey’s mind, and Mickey can’t put a single passing thought into words.

“Nah,” he finally settles on, dismissively. Ian’s eyebrows raise, and his lips twitch into a smile. _God,_ what Mickey would do for the thought of that smile. What he _had_ done for it. “You and me. Couple of old queens, right? Ain’t nobody else. Not in this universe, or that universe, or the universe a fuckin’ block down. You and me.”

“You and me,” Ian repeats breathily.

“‘Gainst the world, you know?”

Ian’s smile widens, his grip tightens on Mickey’s waist. He looks young. Mickey doesn’t feel young. Twenty-two, already lived three lifetimes, working on a fourth.

Mickey wants to ask if Ian’s boyfriend says things like that to him. If he has the same kind of spark they have just sitting here, looking at each other in the colorblind dark, with the other guy.

Wants to ask if Ian loves him, now. If Ian’s fallen for some imposter, picking up their delicate tragedy in his fist, imposing himself on it, thinking it belongs to him. Thinking Ian isn’t already ruined. Claimed.

Mickey’s ruined. He knows that. How the fuck could Ian not be ruined, too?

He doesn’t ask. He knows if he does Ian won’t be real anymore. He’ll turn back into that stranger, the one Mickey fucked twice in mourning. Dutifully. One more fix.

It’s Ian that kisses him. For the first time since he escaped, it’s _Ian_ that kisses him, in the way only Ian ever had, without tongue, without intention. With all the gentleness and sweetness in the world, Ian kisses him.

Mickey loves him. Reveres him. Fuck, _fuck,_ he loves him. He remembers now. He’d forgotten. He thought he hadn’t forgotten but he had.

He needs to have Ian now, while he’s real. One more time. While Ian’s still the sensation on his fingertips, the one that lingers for a few seconds after the contact falls. While Ian’s still the breath on his skin, the light in his sky. While Ian’s still Ian.

“I love you,” Mickey whispers into their kiss. He’s not afraid anymore. He doesn’t have time to be afraid.

He doesn’t think he ever really had time. Just the illusion.

Ian mumbles something back, four little beats of slurred diction that Mickey can’t quite decipher, that he convinces himself could have been ‘ _I love you, too.’_ It’s enough. It’s more than enough. More than the silence. God, anything but the fucking silence.

Mickey deepens the kiss, shifting to straddle Ian, and he feels that _feeling_ bloom, surge, in his chest again, the one that he felt the night before his dad found them, the one he felt the night he came out. The one he felt before Ian was dragged away by MPs. The one he feels when they’re finally connected, in sync, hopelessly in love, invincible. The one that the universe must be alerted to, must be specially tuned to detect so someone out there can deliberate what to throw at them next, what hell to rain down to rip them apart.

Mickey is ready for it this time. He’s not stupid. He lets the feeling swell, he stares back at it while it burns in his chest like a wildfire and he almost laughs out loud.

He’s already an escaped convict. What the hell else could there be? Ian will leave him, sure. He already knows that.

He lets the feeling swell. He lets it consume. He lets it build a memory.

“Think you can go again, Firecrotch?” he teases as runs his hands up underneath Ian’s shirt.

When Ian flips them over roughly with a grin, and Mickey tugs insistently at the button of his jeans, it almost feels normal again.

* * *

When Ian wakes him up, and Mickey watches him get dressed, he knows his Ian, the real Ian, left with the night.

He hates that he wants him to stay, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> i feed off comments


End file.
